US Treasury Goes After a Greek Businessman Who Helped Iran Avoid Sanctions

The US Treasury Department has come down hard on a Greek businessman who they claim has been helping Iran to evade sanctions and export its oil by buying a fleet of oil tankers and then disguising the Iranian oil cargoes that they carried.

Dimitris Cambis, the president of Impire Shipping Ltd. used his company, as well as a few others, to purchase eight tankers capable of carrying $200 million worth of oil. Impire and a management company called Libra Shipping then bought shiploads of Iranian oil, transferred the oil from Iranian tankers to his own ships directly, and then sold the product on the global market, taking the time to conceal the origin of the oil.

David Cohen, the Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence said that, “today we are lifting the veil on an intricate Iranian scheme that was designed to evade international oil sanctions. We will continue to expose deceptive Iranian practices, and to sanction those individuals and entities who participate in these schemes.”

The Treasury Department claims that in December 2012 Impire and the National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC) completed one such transfer just off the coast of Khor Fakkan in the UAE. So far the US Treasury has impounded 58 vessels for similar such transactions.

Cambis spoke to Bloomberg from his office in Athens, stating that “these are very bad rumors created by our competitors because we are trying to take market share and they don’t like it.”